


Memories Are Like Pictures If You Hold Them Right

by endlesschaos



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Emotionally Hurt Sam Winchester, Gen, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, POV Sam Winchester, Sam Winchester Has Mental Health Issues, Sam Winchester-centric, Sort Of, Worried Dean Winchester, but like barely, not wincest even if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:41:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26609971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endlesschaos/pseuds/endlesschaos
Summary: Part of depression is memory loss and somehow that’s worse.-AKA Sam has depression, what else is new?
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 8
Kudos: 81





	Memories Are Like Pictures If You Hold Them Right

He’s gotten to the point where each day feels like a new lifetime. Each time he tries to remember what happened the day before, it’s like sorting through dreams. Sometimes he can manage to grasp a memory, but most tend to slip through his fingers like silk strands.

Sometimes, on the bad days, he loses hours. He’ll think back to what he ate for lunch (if he ate) and he’s not sure if that tuna sandwich was eaten that day or the week before. He won’t be hungry those days, but when he wanders into the kitchen to see Dean armed with beer and burgers, all he can say is _wanna watch something?_ and pretend like he can taste it all.

Generally, he’s fine. He hunts, he researches, he sleeps (sometimes). He can fight with the best of them and no one has to know or will even notice. It’s under control. He can handle it. It’s just, it’s not an issue.

(He likes to convince himself it’s not an issue, but sometimes it’s 3 am and he doesn’t remember how he’s connected to the bunker or the people in it and he has to focus on his breathing and force himself to go to sleep.)

(He likes to convince himself it’s not an issue, but sometimes it’s noon and Dean is joking with him about something from their childhood and he has to pretend like he remembers it as something he experienced rather than something he saw in a movie or read in a book years before.)

(He likes to convince himself it’s not an issue, but sometimes it’s 8 pm and he’s looking at his brother and he has to come to terms with the fact that yes, that is Dean, that is his brother, his face is the same as always, things are just messy in his head at the moment.)

But, he’s fine. The only thing that’s affected is his head. He won’t – can’t – let this affect his hunting or he’ll really mess up and hurt someone – hurt Dean. So, he gives in when he’s alone or when they’re at Jody’s and she and Dean are laughing about some stupid hunt over dinner and he can sit and smile and laugh in all the right places because he’s had practice. He pushes it to the back of his mind when it matters and lets it wash over him when it doesn’t. Just, sometimes they’ll be going for weeks on end and they’ll be back to their different motel, different city, different monster every night lifestyle and he’ll forget how to breathe because he doesn’t recognize anything and even the Impala looks different today and he can’t put his finger on why and he’ll have to pretend like he’s asleep so Dean doesn’t question why his eyes won’t focus and he can’t speak for the life of him.

It’s just that, okay, sometimes he can’t sit in the Impala or even look at Dean without being reminded that he feels like he opened a book to a random page, and he has no idea what came before, but he has to figure out what comes next.

Dean doesn’t mention anything. Sam’s fairly certain he’s not aware. Dean’s always been freakishly in tune with how Sam’s doing, but he assumes that _sometimes I only remember my life through stories I’ve heard and facts that seem true_ doesn’t really sound tangible enough to raise any big brother alarms.

It scares him. He’s woven together by stories of dead parents, cosmic master plans of angels and demons, and a big brother who couldn’t rest. And yet, he can’t remember any of it without being prompted. He thinks back to his language arts classes throughout middle school and high school and how his teachers would make him dissect books, chapters, single pages, single lines until the words themselves didn’t make sense, but their meanings shone through like brilliant questions he’d carry with him throughout his life, bring with him into his next. He thinks back and figures that’s how he goes about remembering his own life. He doesn’t remember the words, the specific moments, but he knows they brought him here and he knows they were and still are important and meaningful, but that’s all he can get out of them, their current impact rather than their own carefully crafted space in his memory.

(He doesn’t remember if he thought this way before he dove into the cage. He hopes he did. He hopes Lucifer hasn’t completely changed the way he thinks years later.)

-

He does whatever he can to not let it affect the way he hunts until it does.

He’s staring at the wendigo they’d been tracking for days and the wendigo stares back and all he can think is _how do you manage to exist?_ and the wendigo almost manages to claw its way into his ribcage until Dean sets it on fire and starts yelling, _what the hell, man? You know you can’t space out like that here. Pull your shit together, Sam,_ and suddenly Sam isn’t so sure that Dean’s oblivious and he wonders how much of himself he’s let slither into the world around him, how much of that is something he’s lost, how much of that he can get back. He’s afraid that every piece that has wandered out is another memory he’ll have to hear someone else mention for him to recognize it.

And he’s lucky. He knows he is. If Dean hadn’t been there, Sam would be dead. He’s lucky enough to have a brother who will have his back no matter what. The hunt is successful because Sam has Dean. Neither of them needs to be patched up (much) when they get back to the car and all Sam can think about is how he wouldn’t have made it back to the car had Dean not been right there right when it mattered. But he also can’t stop thinking about how that wendigo existed only to feed. How, no matter what, the creature they hunted and killed stared directly at him and then only attacked defensively. He’s not sure what it means, but he feels profoundly affected in a way that he knows Dean would call him a girl over.

-

So, he takes a day. He knows he needs longer, a month, a year, a _lifetime_ , but he gives himself a day. They finish up the hunt (stopping by the hotel for three hours rest and to pack up the few items they took with them) and when they get back to the bunker, Sam retreats to his room. He doesn’t want to spend it sleeping, but as soon as he sits on his bed, he’s out.

He wakes a few hours later to his door shutting softly and the realization that his boots have been taken off and a blanket has been thrown over him. He smiles slightly and closes his eyes again. He’s given himself a day.

He wakes again hours later and sees he slept for roughly ten hours – and wow, he can’t remember the last time that happened. But he only has a day. So, he gets to work.

He hasn’t lived a life that has had much material impact. Sure, he’s saved the world a few times, met God, knows the King of Hell well enough to reluctantly call him a friend. But there aren’t pictures on walls documenting his own timeline, there aren’t many possessions of his that have meaning (though he can’t help but keep Dean’s amulet in a special box in a special part of his room to remind him of how things used to be – he can’t help but wonder if Dean would ever wear it again or if things are really that messed up, forever and always).

Despite that, he has all he really needs. He lays out the few pictures he has on the floor. He sets the amulet on top of a picture of him and Dean, anchoring it into reality. He sets his Taurus in the middle, almost laughing at how morbid it looks, how morbid it _is_ that one of the most prominent parts of his life centers around the death and destruction of a gun. He sets his dad’s journal on the floor too, for the best way to remember himself is through the documented words of a man who barely knew him.

(He’s secretly tempted to find one of the Supernatural books to put down, but he doesn’t own one and he only has a day.)

He looks over his few belongings and starts placing things together in his head before writing it all down in his own journal (he’d gotten it a few years before, but didn’t know how to start or what to say so it collected dust in the bottom of his bag).

He writes all that he knows, small memories he’s plucked from random points in his head. He writes about the time he gave Dean the amulet (remembering it like it happened yesterday but terrified he’ll forget eventually). He writes about the time John tried to send them to summer camp while he went on a hunt two states over, but his fake credit card had gotten declined, so they were sent away to Caleb’s instead. He looks at the picture of him and Dean under the amulet and writes about how they’d been teenagers, probably 14 and 18, and Bobby had realized how few pictures there were of the boys, so he’d insisted on taking one.

He writes until he hears Dean knocking on his door, asking if he’ll be leaving his room at all that day and if he wanted any dinner. He figures he may as well eat, so he packs everything up into a box that he slides under his bed, leaving John’s journal on his desk.

Dean’s giving him a weird look when he walks out and he figures he looks a little wild-eyed after sitting on the floor of his room, staring at a journal all day.

“You feelin’ okay?” Dean asks.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he says, frowning at the salad he’s scooping onto his plate.

“Alright, sure, you haven’t left your room once today, but you’re fine.”  
  
“I’m not in there right now, am I?” It’s not what Dean means, and he knows it. He’s not trying to be difficult, but this is something he needs to do. He gave himself a day, this is how he needs to spend it. He needs to write up his life like he’s writing his memoir. He needs to remember.

Once he’s back in his room, he starts writing again until he realizes this won’t help. It will help him remember, it will help him know who he is and who the people in his life are, but it won’t help answer his questions. It won’t stop him from staring down another monster and wondering how they came to be (God, he knows, Eve, but do monsters have souls? What part of them ends up in Purgatory? Do they exist outside of the physical? Does he?)

He writes anyway, he lets himself get lost in the paper and the words and thinks, _this has to be enough_.

(But later, it’s 3 am and he’s reading over what he’s written, and he doesn’t remember writing those specific words and he’s forgotten why he wrote them to begin with. He’s spent all day on a meaningless task that does nothing. He wonders if writing them down means his brain has decided he doesn’t need to store them any longer.)

He keeps going, of course, he’s nothing if not persistent. Over the next few weeks, he fills page after page with more memories, fits pictures in as proof they – he – existed at one point.

One day, Dean notices the journal, resting on the kitchen counter, closed. He considers it until Sam walks into the room and casually but intentionally positions himself between Dean and the journal.

“I didn’t know you kept a journal.” He says, not accusatory, just offhanded.

“Oh, yeah, started a few weeks ago.” Sam doesn’t offer any more information, just gets water and the journal, and heads to his room.

-

They hunt as usual, though Dean may be keeping a closer eye on Sam when he thinks he isn’t looking. Sam thinks that’s business as usual, too. He doesn’t let himself think when he’s in a fight. He lets his training take over as soon as they’re out hunting. He can’t let himself get stuck again, he can’t let himself freeze again. He’s not the only one who needs backup.

He wonders when he got so good at compartmentalizing. He wonders whose fault it is. He wonders if now he’s got too many boxes in his head so he’s using the journal for more storage. He wonders if that’s what John did, too.

(He hopes not.)

Sam knows Dean is just itching to sit him down and ask him what’s up, but they both know he won’t. Dean’s good at physical check-ins, _you haven’t eaten in days, eat this, have a beer, are you hurt?_ Dean’s not good at emotional check-ins. He’s always been able to depend on Sam to come forward with whatever is bothering him, to sit heavily on some shitty motel bed and look up at Dean with eyes that say _I need help, there’s something wrong_. He doesn’t know how to deal with Sam when he stops talking. Sam knows he’s not making it easy. He’s forgotten how.

-

(It’s 3 am and he has to write _I am Sam Winchester I am Sam Winchester I am Sam Winchester_ over and over down a full-page, terrified that’s what he’ll forget next.)

-

He’d had a job at Stanford. A real, legal, taxes pulled from every biweekly paycheck job. He stocked the shelves at the campus library and helped other students find textbooks. Years later, years before, when they’re helping Aaron and his golem, Sam thinks about how many nights he’d stayed late working while students studied for finals around him. How many times he used the LC classification system to help one girl find her books more often than he had first thought necessary (later, at a party, he finds out she’s friends with Brady and he’d never been happier to be at a party. Years after that, he’d never regretted it more).

(He writes this down in his journal one night with glassy eyes and shaky hands and he knows deep in his bones he’ll never forget the girl whose sole purpose in his life was to die.)

-

He doesn’t forget the basics is what he finds. He knows how to use a gun, he knows how to kill a werewolf, a vampire, a demon, a whatever the hell they need to kill. He just forgets himself sometimes. He knows the facts, just not always the context. Conscious within, not without.

He wonders when he went too far into his own head and forgot his way out.

He wants to sit Dean down and tell him he’s alright. He wants to sit Dean down and ask him how _he’s_ doing.

He sits in his room and writes whatever he can remember.

-

He’s long past one journal. He’s filled roughly half a dozen, lining them up on his bookcase like the encyclopedias and lore books out in the library. He wonders if he writes enough, he too will become lore.

When he’s not writing, he’s hunting or researching with Dean. He’s lost weight, he can see it in the way his clothes hang off him in a way they haven’t since the trials. He forgets to eat, he forgets he’s eaten. He writes.

His writing is stilted, logical, scientific. A reminder of things that have passed, not a story of things that deserve lyrics, beauty, poetry. He just has to get it on the page, he doesn’t care how it reads.

He hears life around him when he’s holed up in his room, writing, but he can’t bring himself to be a part of it. He gave himself a day and he’s taking months, stealing time he shouldn’t have for things he barely knows (he has quite the habit of doing that, Dean would say, Ruby would say, God would say).

He refrains from taking his journals on hunts with him, anxious over leaving one at a motel he’d never return to, leaving his memories cushioned between a mattress and a wall. He thinks maybe he’s obsessing, thinks maybe he’s overthinking. Souls need to think, but souls need to just be sometimes, too. He’s never had a balance, though he hasn’t always had a soul (Or did he? Is he just his soul or does he exist more as his physical form? Does that mean he stayed in the cage for a year and a half or was he just stretched between physicality and spirituality? Does it even matter? He thinks it should).

(He refrains, but sometimes it’s 3 am and Dean is passed out in the next bed over and he remembers something he wants to write down, but he won’t have his journal with him, so he’ll have to sit in his bed repeating the basics of it so he doesn’t forget again. These nights, Dean will roll over and say, _go to sleep, Sam, you’re thinking too loud_ and Sam will breathe again and go to sleep.)

-

He’s on a hunt with Dean and he keeps getting a nagging feeling in the back of his head that he’s done this before. Not a vision, but a similarity. He knows that’s normal in this line of work, every now and then a hunter will find a new beast, but the most common, most prevalent ones don’t change. It’s easy to bet on a fang when victims are exsanguinated and a wolf when hearts are missing. But for some reason, he can’t remember another case of different animals killing people to get to other animals.

“Have we done this before?” He asks Dean.

“Huh?”

“Like, doesn’t this feel familiar? We have several different species, or at least what looks like several different species, going after other animals.”

“What, so you’re saying that the snake attack and the wolf attack were both just one thing?” Dean stops, thinks, looks up. “Wait, you’re right. Do you remember that jackass chef we hunted a few years ago? Yeah, he was eating animal organs for some weird ritual.”

Sam stares. He has no idea. He doesn’t remember it at all. He only has that feeling like he should. Dean gives him a look like he should, then looks guilty.

“Oh, uh, that was – Gadreel.” Dean immediately looks like he regrets saying the name and Sam realizes why he doesn’t remember it. He tries to forget all of the times he’s walked around with someone else inside him.

(He hates, hates, hates that he has to say ‘all’ rather than ‘one.’ Hates, hates, hates that he can say he’s been possessed before at all.)

He clears his throat, says, “Oh,” and changes the subject. “So, what was it? What was the guy doing with the organs?”

Dean gives him the rundown, looking guilty and uncomfortable the whole time, but also grateful that Sam didn’t linger. Sam just listens and wonders what would happen if he ate an elephant’s brain. An elephant never forgets and all that (he considers it longer than he should).

-

They manage to find the man who’s doing the killing and Sam ponders the validity of this fight. This man, a local plant nursery owner with a cancer diagnosis named Sal, only kills humans that get in his way. It’s a fight for survival. Sure, he’s a murderer and he needs to be stopped, but he’s also a human (Sam has learned the hard way that actions alone don’t make someone a monster, even if he still has a hard time applying that logic to himself). The local police force has been looking for the person responsible for the recent killings. Sam and Dean have found him. What’s stopping them from turning him in rather than murdering him? Does he get to be the judge, jury, and executioner of a man he barely knows?

He doesn’t voice these thoughts to Dean, just follows him into the nursery. Dean whispers, “Be careful, last guy ate a chameleon,” and Sam wonders why that’d be memorable.

He wonders why it’d be memorable until they enter through the backdoor and he suddenly remembers with terrible clarity the moment between throat-cut-choking-dying and gasping-breathing-healed-confusion-nothing and he has to stop for a second before he can follow Dean further. Dean doesn’t notice at first, moving swiftly and quietly, but he turns slightly, and Sam makes eye contact with him. Sam knows his face shows nothing but fear as soon as Dean’s stoic hunting face turns to worry and fear as well.

He can’t do this. Not here. He has to tighten up and hunt this guy. He sees Dean’s eyes widen suddenly until he doesn’t see a thing and he’s out.

-

He wakes tied to a chair, arms twisted behind his back. His head aches and he can’t focus his eyes, but he hears Dean shifting. Dean’s looking at him worriedly when he looks over and he hates it. He knows the gardener wouldn’t be able to tell, but it doesn’t matter anyway. With the lights on, Sam can see that the nursery is operated from Sal’s house. They’re tied up in his kitchen, both in chairs seated around the dining table. Sal is humming something and cooking. When he looks over, he smiles. He’s a plump, friendly-looking older man, probably a foot shorter than Sam. He doesn’t look to be in shape or like he’d be used to fighting at all. Sam knows the only reason he overpowered them is that Sam messed up. Sam should’ve been paying attention to his surroundings, not some fucked up memory from years before.

“Glad you’ve finally joined us. I was starting to think I was going to have to listen to your brother threaten me all night,” Sal says, still smiling. He speaks kindly and it’s such a weird contradiction to the words he says that Sam has trouble keeping up – though he’s also starting to realize he definitely has a concussion. He looks over at Dean who’s staring dead at Sal, eyes full of wrath.

“Oh, come on, I’m still gonna do that,” Dean says, going for casual and almost succeeding. Sal doesn’t seem to notice, he just walks over, ‘tsk-tsk-tsking’ the whole way.

“Now, Dean,” and Sam has absolutely no idea how Sal found out Dean’s real name, worried he knows too much now. At this point, they have to kill him (which, okay, redundant, that was kind of the whole plan). “Is that any way to talk to your host?”

Dean scoffs. Sam hasn’t said a thing, hasn’t even opened his mouth since stepping into the house in the first place. His mind is blank. He has no idea how they’re going to get out of this one, which is stupid. They’ve been in much worse situations which much worse foes. They can handle this, but Sam can’t think of a single plan. That is until Sam sees Dean's shoulders move minutely, back and forth. He can’t see Dean’s hands, but he knows that move, knows Dean is either sawing the rope on something or working on untying the rope enough to slip out. He does the same, uses his finger to search for any kind of sharp edge near him, and, once finding nothing, starts going for the knot.

It’s an easy knot, one his dad had taught him how to get out of when he was _nine_. He struggles with it. He searches his mind for an unseasonably cold day in September, tries to picture the crappy motel of the week, forces himself to focus on his dad’s words. _Okay, Sam, you’re tied up. What now?_

_I, uh, I rub my hands together, try to loosen the rope a little._

_Okay, and if you still can’t get your hands free?_

_Find the knot and find the loosest part?_

_Find the loosest part._

He’s got his fingers around the loosest part of the knot and unties easily. He looks up to Dean who is looking right back. He nods his head almost imperceptibly and Dean nods back. He counts to 3 then drops the rope and goes for Sal. He’s got his right arm wrapped around Sal’s neck before he seems to register what’s happening. He’s not armed, he knows that much, but killing him like this feels cruel, evil, _wrong_. His grip loosens slightly, and Sal uses that hesitation to slip out, pulling Sam’s arm with him around to Sam’s back and grabbing a knife from the counter to hold against Sam’s throat.

“Was this your master plan? Really?”

Sam doesn’t realize until he looks to Dean that while Sam went for Sal, Dean went for the guns and he’s got one aimed right at them.

“C’mon, Dean. Set it down. You’re not gonna hurt your brother just to kill me.” Sal says from behind Sam. He’s just short enough that Sam completely shields him from Dean, who is slowly setting his gun on the floor. Sam doesn’t miss the one shoved into the back of his pants, but Sal does.

“Alright, gun’s down. Now, how about you just let Sam go and we’ll be on our way.” Sam knows Dean’s stalling, calculating, planning. Sal just laughs.

“Yeah, right. You’ll just come back and kill me. I know how this ends.”

“You’ve already managed to get us twice tonight. Just let us go.”

Sal laughs again, “Yeah, because this guy’s a spacey idiot.”

Dean frowns, angry, but just looks Sam right in the eye as if trying to communicate something. It takes Sam way too long to get it, but once he does, he just thinks, _duh_. Sal’s short. Like, really short. If Dean can’t see Sal, there’s no way Sal can see Dean.

Dean slowly reaches behind to grab the other gun, clicking the safety off and pointing it at Sal’s legs. Incapacitate. All Sam has to do is twist at just the right moment. He uses his right arm to push Sal backward as he leans back with him and uses his shoulder to push Sal’s arm away from this throat, moving to the right just as Dean shoots Sal straight through the thigh. Sal goes down, but not without slicing the knife across Sam’s collarbone and shoulder. He cries out, but moves before Sal can try anything else on his way to the floor. Dean has moved closer, gun pointed right at Sal’s head now.

“Spacey idiot? Really?” Dean’s completely still. He’s standing above Sal, aim not having moved from his forehead. Without looking away, he says, “Sam, you good?”

“Yeah, I’ll live.” It’s true, the gash on his collarbone is bloody, but not very deep. Stitches, maybe, but nothing to worry about.

“Well then, Sal, today’s your lucky day. I’ll make this quick.” Sal doesn’t even have time to beg before Dean puts a bullet between his eyes. Sam doesn’t even have time to react before Dean’s spinning around to him, anger still prevalent. “Sam, what the hell? This guy is like half your size and about as threatening as a teddy bear. You should’ve had control that _whole_ time.”

He’s not wrong. There was not one point during that whole thing that Sam should’ve been in that much danger. But Sam doesn’t even know what to say. He doesn’t know how to explain. He can’t say, _oh, I just remembered how last time we met one of these guys, he clawed my fucking throat out, and the psycho angel you had possess me healed me just in time_. He can’t give anything. He opens his mouth then closes it again, not sure how to explain what he doesn’t even understand. Dean rolls his eyes and turns back to Sal.

“Alright, let’s clean this up.” And that is, apparently, that.

-

He knows it can’t be over. When they get back to the bunker a couple of days later, Sam is itching to write down what he remembers about Gadreel. He hates thinking about the constant blackouts, the confusion every time something happened that he couldn’t explain (at the time, that he couldn’t explain at the time; now he has enough to connect the dots and he hates it even though he’d much rather know). This is one of the few memories he hopes he’ll forget by writing about it. But Dean has other plans, cornering him in the library after they walk in and set down their bags.

“Okay, I thought giving you space was what you needed, but clearly you’ve got shit climbing those walls. What the hell is going on?” He thinks about denying it, saying he’s not hallucinating, he’s just remembering, but that’s how the post-Hell-Wall hallucinations started too.

(It’s different. It’s different. It’s _different_.)

“Sam?” He realizes he’s just been standing there, staring, not saying a damn thing (like a spacey idiot). He wants to laugh it off, make a joke about how the guy was stronger than he looked, but he’s been quiet too long, and he knows Dean saw his face before Sal even showed up.

“I, uh, I remembered Chef Leo and the chameleon traits.” Sam cringes before he even finishes the last word. He shouldn’t have phrased it like that. It’s like he’s blaming Dean because he’s the one who mentioned it. He’s not blaming Dean, he’s _not_. It’s his own fault and he knows it. And he doesn’t want to talk about it. He doesn’t want to talk about Gadreel and possession and all the tension they’d had to work through (or, at least, bury deep enough so it didn’t affect their day-to-day). He wants to get control over his head and to keep working. “It’s fine though. I’m fine.”

“Yeah, sure, you sound fine.”

“Look, I’m handling it. That won’t happen again.” He sounds more like he’s pleading with Dean to believe him, but if it works, it works.

“Please,” Dean scoffs. “Okay, if you don’t want to talk about it, fine, but stop lying to me.”

It’s a fair point, but it only serves to make him feel guilty.

-

Dean’s right is the thing. He can’t just scoff and pretend like Dean’s making a big deal over nothing. He thinks maybe the journals are becoming a hindrance rather than a help, an obsession rather than a release, so, he puts them away. He finds an empty box in one of the many back rooms they have in the bunker and he piles all the journals into it, sliding it under his bed to hide. He’s tired of focusing on his memories. They haven’t helped him. Everything about his life has only been harming him (except his brother, but even then, there are some things he’d like to forget – Amy, Gadreel, his own guilt for his many mistakes).

The first few days are hard. He keeps seeing memories in every part of the bunker (an argument he and Dean had about the trials and how Sam needed to take better care of himself in the library; a joke Dean told Cas that he hadn’t understood while they were standing around the kitchen island). He’s itching to write them down, he’d trained himself to remember and write, but he can’t now, he won’t now. He tries to leave his room more often, force himself to sit in the library or the war room or the kitchen or even the dungeon when he can’t stand to be anywhere else any longer (though having to look at the chair he’d tied Dean to while trying to cure him doesn’t help his nerves much either).

(He falls asleep at the table in the dungeon in the middle of the day once and startles awake to a book slapping down on the floor, dreaming it’d been the hammer against the wall – the one intended for his skull. He tries not to stay in there too long anymore.)

He gets through it, of course, what else is he going to do? But he regresses pretty quickly. He’s foggy, unfocused, confused. Sometimes he can’t hear a thing. Logically, he knows his ears are working perfectly fine, but there’s absolutely no part of his brain that will comprehend the sounds around him (even when the sounds are actually Dean yelling at him because _dammit, Sam, listen to me, Jesus Christ, can you even hear a single goddamn thing I’m saying? Just fucking come back, please_ ). The worst part is that Sam isn’t even aware that he’s sitting in silence (or maybe he just forgets).

-

He’s not sure what he’s supposed to be doing at this point. He’s floating from place to place, hunt to hunt. He has to keep going, it’s not like their life is anything but chaotic, busy, apocalyptic. He’s pretty sure he has to keep going. It’s not like he can just up and quit after everything. He thinks about Dean saying that if he knew everyone could be safe, if all the monsters could be stopped, then they could settle down, _on a beach somewhere_ , as if that’s what makes all the difference. The world doesn’t see them as heroes, but they have to be around to save it – even if they’re the ones endangering it at every turn – from themselves, he figures. He tries to remember the last time the impending apocalypse wasn’t their fault (he doesn’t know if it’s another thing he’s forgotten or if it really has been over ten years).

He’d like to think they could find that retirement golden age. He likes to think that yeah, he’d miss hunting. As much as it has been ingrained in him through not just his childhood but through his adulthood, he’s come to realize that no matter where he goes, he’s a hunter through and through. He’d miss it, but he’d rather not have to worry whether this is the hunt that gets him or, more importantly, gets Dean. He’d rather not see articles from tiny newspapers across the country stating that yes, another person has died from a monster he knows exactly how to kill, another person he could have saved has been killed.

So yes, he’d miss hunting, but it wouldn’t be worth it to pass on the ability to make sure everyone was safe from anything supernatural. He figures maybe finding the way to make that happen is what he’s supposed to be doing. What he should have been doing.

-

He thinks maybe holding the amulet in his jacket pocket, easily accessible to be tightly grasped in his fist as if he’s a toddler, will ground him. He tries it out for a few weeks. It helps a bit. Every now and then when he feels especially unfocused, confused, dazed, detached (he’s not sure how that works, but he knows it’s probably the word that fits best), he grasps onto it, lets its edges leave tiny imprints in his skin. It helps in the same way the faded scar on his palm had. Less pain, more Dean.

It helps, but he knows to hide it from Dean. He knows they’re past their post-Heaven, pre-Cage melodrama, but he can’t help but feel as if sharing with Dean that he’d dug it out of the tiny motel trashcan immediately after Dean had dropped it in was wrong, was an act of betrayal. He wants to wear it around his neck, but he can’t. Dean notices too much to not notice the small lump under Sam’s layers.

It helps, but only for a few weeks.

They hunt a particularly angry ghost and it’s during the salt-and-burn that Sam gets tossed a little too hard, thrown right into an oddly tall gravestone headfirst, wind knocked out of him, and it’s choking, pain-filled confusion that has him looking down for any bodily injuries and instead seeing the amulet several feet from him. As soon as he notices, he’s able to work past the haze and the throbbing in his head to stand, stumble, fall, crawl until he has it safely back in his grasp. Dean’s too busy throwing matches into the grave to notice, for which Sam has never been more grateful.

The ghost burns up right as it’s about to go for round two and Sam lets himself fall into the grass fully. He’s not down long before Dean’s there, grabbing at his shoulder, his hip, turning him over belly to sky for inspection.

“You good? How many fingers am I holding up?” He doesn’t sound too worried, which, fair, this is a regular Thursday night for them, and when Sam looks to Dean’s hand, he sees only one (the middle, of course), and he rolls his eyes at Dean’s smirk.

“Fuck off, I’m fine.” He hauls himself up with Dean’s help and they stumble back to the car. If he’s concussed it’s only mild. He wobbles a little on his feet, but the only thing he’s concerned about at the moment is that he almost lost the amulet for real this time and he knows he has to put it back in its box when they get back to the bunker. His stomach twists at the thought, but he’d be on his hands and knees puking if he’d lost it for real.

(When they get back that night, he dreams he had actually left it back at that cemetery and he spends the rest of the night in front of the toilet, hacking up every bit of anxiety he has.)

-

He continues like that for a while. He works his way through the books in the library and the archives, he hunts with Dean when they either find a case or can’t stand to be in the bunker any longer, he works around whatever is going on in his head. He functions.

(Except sometimes it’s 4 am and he hasn’t slept because he’s had to reread pages of his journals because he can’t remember a single goddamn thing about his life.)

(Except sometimes it’s the middle of the day and Dean tries to say something offhand to him and he doesn’t catch it because he doesn’t know Dean’s even in the room until he’s standing right in his face looking at him like he’s insane.)

(Except sometimes he doesn’t even know what time it is and the only reason he knows he’s in the bunker is because he knows he’s supposed to know that he is, not because he actually recognizes any part of it.)

He’s great at fooling himself. He’s better at fooling everyone else. That’s all he needs, really. Anything else is just extra, fluff, filler episodes in the tv show he sometimes feels like he’s living. As long as he can pass for functional, as long as he can pretend long enough to kill the monster under the bed or around the corner, as long as he can ward off yet another end-of-the-world catastrophe, anything going on in his head is just another piece of the tragic puzzle that is Sam Winchester. He’s okay with it. He can deal with it. He has to.

Right?

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not super happy with this. it's the longest thing i've ever written so i kind of got lost along the way. idk there's a fairly good chance i'll delete this and rewrite the ending completely. oh well, please let me know what you think! and, as per usual, this has not been beta'd, i wrote it over the span of a few weeks and i haven't read it over more than like once


End file.
